


face the day with

by sleepinnude



Category: Glee
Genre: Angst, Gen, Mentions of Violence, mentions of bullying, sadie hawkins dance headcanon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-07
Updated: 2013-04-07
Packaged: 2017-12-07 19:13:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/752021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sleepinnude/pseuds/sleepinnude
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cooper intercedes after the Sadie Hawkins Dance and helps his little brother in the only ways he can.</p>
            </blockquote>





	face the day with

Cooper was in the ripe year of legally able when he got the call. His mother took hiccuping breaths over the phone line and it was late on a Friday and he wasn’t drunk yet but if everything went according to plan he would be within an hour or so. But then his mother managed to piece words and information together and all Cooper needed in the end was to hear “Blaine” and “hurt” and he was already calculating hours and mileage. His father took the phone then and explained everything further, with details and motives, while his mother wept quietly at his side. Anger surged through Cooper and cleaned his system sober. His boots were kicked on and his keys were in his hand and he was out the door before his father could even give him a standard Anderson, hybrid “Goodbye love you.”

It was dark and straight highway for most of the drive and Cooper realized once his heartbeat leveled out that he was far too drunk to be driving alone. That ratcheted his nerves up and adrenaline fed his brain a steady diet of “oh god”s and “what if”s. His dad had told him that Blaine was going to be fine, he was hurt and badly and it was awful but he was awake and talking so he would be fine. Cooper was the most down-to-earth one in the whole family, usually but this was his brother. This was his little brother who had gotten the shit kicked out of him for daring to take a boy to a dance and Cooper choked back tears because that’s all he needed right now: to be drunk and crying and trying to navigate I-70. 

The sun was just hitting the horizon when he pulled into the hospital parking lot. Everything was a little too foreign, a little too grown-up for him. He was twenty-one but he was still very much a child and felt even more like one with the way his entire insides were shaking at the thought of why he was entering this hospital and what lay in store for him and there was the constant backing thought, like a snare drum keeping beat, that he wanted to hunt those little assholes down and kick the ever-living shit out of them.

When he finally made it to the right floor (an effort that brought him to the edge of breaking down again because he got lost and the nurse wouldn’t tell him anything at first and he hadn’t slept and his head was pounding and his throat was locking up and he wanted to see his brother but more than anything he wanted to sink into his mother’s embrace), he croaked out his brother’s name, told the wary nurse that he was family, yes, and then he had a number and half a stretch of hallways between him and Blaine.

He took it at a run.

His boot soles screeched on linoleum as he skidded to a stop and thudded into the room, echoing in the sanitized silence of the hospital halls. The room was sleeping. His father upright in a chair at the foot of the hospital bed, arms crossed over his chest and a slight frown over his face. His mother half-sitting, half-slumped over the side of Blaine’s bed, her hand tangled in one of Blaine’s, over his heart. He moved in having come to a complete stop, laid a hand over their father’s shoulder, pressed a kiss to their mother’s hair.

And then Blaine.

Blaine looking older than he had a few months ago, when Cooper had last seen him before heading back to school at the end of winter break. Looking older and, god it turned Cooper’s stomach, battered. With bruises and a split lip and bandaging and wires. Cooper swallowed a sob and moved around the foot of the bed to the far side. He reached a hand out tentatively before stroking fingers through Blaine’s curls, matted and frizzy and entirely unkempt and god, Cooper knew Blaine would hate that were he awake. A watery laugh choked out of him at that, brought back from that summer with him constantly trying to undo Blaine, muss his hair and loosen his clothes, while Blaine constantly tried to straighten Cooper as Blaine and their father rebuilt a car in the driveway and Cooper loped in and out of their sight, going to and coming from his summer job.

Blaine twitched and stirred at that and Cooper seized up. A whimper started low in Blaine’s chest and Cooper wanted to cry, wanted to turn back time and take this all away. Instead, he toed off his boots and hefted himself carefully onto the hospital bed. Blaine made a noise like a lazy moan and his neck rolled. He blinked blearily and coughed, eyes widening. “Coop?” he asked, voice a harsh whisper.

“Hey, kiddo,” Cooper greeted, entire being wavering at the tears that welled up in his brother’s eyes. He passed another hand over Blaine’s hair, petting a soothing line down his temple. “Get back to sleep,” a choked sob, “you look like shit.”

Blaine grinned anemic, then winced at the pull on his split lip it caused. “You should see the other guys,” he quipped weakly.

Cooper laughed but the sound came out more as one of despair. “I’m sure,” he replied, pressing his forehead to Blaine’s shoulder so he didn’t see him cry. 

When their parents woke an hour or so later, they found Blaine and Cooper both sleeping soundly on the hospital bed. For once, their heads were identical, dark masses of loose curls (something that hadn’t happened since Blaine was about twelve and discovered hair gel), one of Cooper’s big hands splayed over Blaine’s chest.

In the week plus that followed, Cooper’s grades suffered slightly as he stubbornly disregarded his family’s argument and stayed in Ohio. He spent afternoons into late nights with his brother. They watched movies and musicals and read side by side and, to Blaine’s protests that he could do it perfectly fine on his own, Cooper helped Blaine back into bed when he couldn’t keep his eyes open any longer. He sat outside his brother’s door, eyes closed but ears pricked, waiting for the barest hint of a nightmare.

And when the tell-tale whimpers and tossing and turning and gasps started, Cooper eased through the door and into Blaine’s bed, rubbed a comforting hand over Blaine’s shoulder, down his chest, across his spine, waiting for either his breathing to even out again or for Blaine to jerk awake, a moan on his lips and fear in his eyes. He always fought Cooper in those first moments, fists coming up and feet kicking out. Moments later the night stilled and shame fell over Blaine’s damp face but Cooper didn’t let that last long. He pulled his brother into his arms and pressed Blaine’s face into his chest and held him close and waited for their heartbeats to sync up.

Cooper spent his mornings, while his brother slept late and his parents had hushed conversations over coffee, on the internet. His eyes reflected blue and off-white as he scrolled through search results, made scrawled notes over Post-Its and copy-pasted paragraphs of information into an ever-growing Word document. He sent countless emails and stuttered over phone-call inquiries. He learned to tell people Blaine was his son because that sounded a lot more respectable than little brother. Skills that had fallen by the wayside when it come to academic research papers got thrown into hyper-drive as he took a crash course in telling truth from bullshit and scams from legitimate institutions.

Then, one day, about an hour into his searching, Cooper found it like a beacon. Dalton Academy. It was polished and pressed and the words “Zero Tolerance Bullying Policy” shown. Cooper read every page available on the website and then he dialed the phone. Blaine slept. Their mother cried and their father held her hand. 

When Cooper hung up, he promptly collapsed onto his bed. His shoulders melted and the hitch that had taken up permanent residence in his breathing ever since that eight-hour drive in the middle of the night faded away. He slept.

Later that afternoon, he settled next to Blaine on the couch and wordlessly passed him the laptop, open to Dalton’s homepage. Blaine started a question but never finished it, taking in shining dark wood and navy blue blazers. Cooper watched as he clicked around swallowing thickly. And then he watched the hope that had grown tentative and slow over Blaine’s face shrink away at something. He folded the computer closed and passed it back to Cooper. 

“Blaine?” he prompted.

“It’s too much. It’s way too much.”

Cooper licked his lips and looked to the ceiling. “You’d be safe.”

That night, with Blaine’s hesitant blessing, he showed his findings to their parents. Their father had retreated to his office with a calculator and their financial information. Their mother had pored over the entire website as Cooper had, one hand pressed to her mouth and eyes wide. Blaine lingered by the doorway. 

When Cooper finally packed himself back off to school it was with the image of his brother with shoulders high and hair flattened, decked out in a navy blazer and striped tie and something like peace of mind.


End file.
